The Parking Lots Were Full, But The Mountain Was Not

Rolling into the parking lot at Alpine Meadows early this morning, I didn’t have the highest hopes for the day. Families were rolling in early for the Tahoe Race series on Kangaroo, and the grey skies looked like they were there for the long haul. But then I got out on the mountain and skiing and forgot about all of that. By 10 am the overcast skies were gone and people had spread out around the mountain. There were many parents that just stayed in the lodge or hung out on the deck. So the reality is, there were a lot of people at the mountain today, but they were not all skiing or riding.

Select areas of the mountain were busy, and it is quite predictable. The Summit queue remained full for much of the morning, and the busiest groomers were busy. Avoid Alpine Bowl, Rock Garden, Werners and Weasel and it is hard to tell that it was a weekend. I did a few Summit laps this morning with about a 5 minute wait, but the rest of the day never had a wait of more than about 2-3 minutes at Roundhouse, Sherwood or Scott. Moving around and being flexible are the keys.

The grooming continues to be excellent, but the challenges are getting greater. We now stand at about 5 weeks since the last significant snow refresh, and the snow is getting tired. Over the last week, there’s places that there’s no better description than ice. There’s only so much tilling that can be done, and once that gets scraped off, some spots get very slick. I’ve had some of those “Whoa!” moments on Terry’s Return, Ladies Slalom, Yellow and Wolverine. Often it’s right at the breakovers where these icy plates catch you. This is not the fault of the mountain. It’s just where we are at.

I was pleasantly surprised to find lines so short over at Sherwood this afternoon. It was also a treat to find that the run along the west side of the creek below Sherwood Face was groomed again, as was what might be Robin Hood or might be Maid Marian above it. The signs are confusing, and this year, seem to disagree with the current map. If you look back through the map history for Alpine Meadows, there is little consistency for how they are named. So I am now calling any groomed run that falls between Sherwood Run and Sherwood Face the generic name of “Maid Robin Tucks”. Whatever it may be called, it’s always fantastic to have alternate groomed runs enabling people to avoid the Sherwood Run.

I did a number of runs in absolutely perfect corn in the East Gully zone around midday. The notable thing is that I did three runs in a row through there without seeing another person. So no, the whole mountain was not that crowded today.

Speaking of Sherwood…the latest “official” Operations Blog was posted by Liz Worgan yesterday. I’ll say it again, it is super refreshing to see such transparency from the marketing department. Specific things of interest to note:

• The current snow conditions at Tiegel are just not great for building out a terrain park. There’s not that much snow there to work with, and what is there is super sugary. While the blog indicated they may try it again this week, I wouldn’t raise my hopes very high.

• With warm temperatures and no recent snow, south facing snow pack is dwindling rapidly. Even with intensive snow farming that has happened on Lakeview and Sherwood, it’s just not enough. I noted some brownish patches appearing at Bobby’s today too. The official blog estimated these lifts may last another three weeks.

Hope Has Returned To The Forecast

The models are starting to be a little bit more positive about maybe some change. All four model runs of the GFS today showed some storm activity appearing mid-month. Looking at the ensemble GEFS total precipitation forecast, it could get to a significant change by the 21st. The important thing to note is that models are seeing change 10 days out, which moves these storms from Fantasyland into the Realm of Possibility. Stay away from my football Lucy!

Sunday Update: Lucy did indeed pull that football away from Charlie Brown. The models are back to dry and dry and dry again. Oh well.